Quick Links - Poets.org

follow poets.org

Search form

The Academy of American Poets is the largest membership-based nonprofit organization fostering an appreciation for contemporary poetry and supporting American poets. For over three generations, the Academy has connected millions of people to great poetry through programs such as National Poetry Month, the largest literary celebration in the world; Poets.org, the Academy’s popular website; American Poets, a biannual literary journal; and an annual series of poetry readings and special events. Since its founding, the Academy has awarded more money to poets than any other organization.

On April 12, 1941, Toi Derricotte was born in Hamtramck, Michigan. She earned her BA in special education from Wayne State University and her MA in English literature from New York University.

Her books of poetry include The Undertaker's Daughter (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2011); Tender (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1997), which won the 1998 Paterson Poetry Prize; Captivity (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1989); Natural Birth (Crossing Press, 1983); and The Empress of the Death House (Lotus Press, 1978). She is also the author of a literary memoir, The Black Notebooks (W. W. Norton, 1997), which won the 1998 Annisfield-Wolf Book Award for Non-Fiction.

Together with Cornelius Eady, in 1996, she cofounded the Cave Canem Foundation, a national poetry organization committed to cultivating the artistic and professional growth of African American poets. In 2016, she and Eady accepted the National Book Foundation's Literarian Award for Outstanding Service to the American Literary Community on behalf of Cave Canem.

About her work, the poet Sharon Olds has said, "Toi Derricotte's poems show us our underlife, tender and dreadful. And they are vibrant poems, poems in the voice of the living creature, the one who escaped—and paused, and turned back, and saw, and cried out. This is one of the most beautiful and necessary voices in American poetry today."

Her honors include the Barnes & Noble Writers for Writers Award from Poets & Writers, the Distinguished Pioneering of the Arts Award from the United Black Artists, the Lucille Medwick Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America, the Paterson Award for Sustained Literary Achievement for Previous Winners of The Paterson Poetry Prize, the PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Rockefeller Foundation.

She served as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets from 2012 to 2017 and is currently a professor of English at the University of Pittsburgh.

Weekend Guests from Chicago, 1945

In their brand new caramel Cadillac,Julia and Walter arrived at 4,Trunk stuffed with leather suitcases,Steaks, champagne and oysters in a cooler,And Walter’s only drink—Johnnie Walker Blue.Julia, hands flaring, in the clunky musicOf a pound of real gold charms,Walter in a tan linen jacketAnd shoes soft as old money.

She was known from New York to LAFor her fried chicken and greens,And didn’t hesitate, after hours of driving,To throw an apron over a French cotton dressAnd slap the flour on thirty or more pieces.

Oh the chicken breasts and thighsSpattering, juicy, in just the right degree of heat,As she told stories, hilarious and trueTo a kitchen full of steamy womenThat made them double over and pee themselves.

Saturday morning, men to golf,And women in floral robesWith cups of a New Orleans blendSo strong they saidIt stained the rim and turned you black;Me, in a high chair, strainingFor language, my bottleStirred with a spoon of coffeeAnd half a pint of cream.

At 15,My first trip cross-country on a train,I stopped to spend the night.We took the “L” to Marshall FieldsWhere Julia bought my first expensive cold creamsAnd hose the shades of which—for the first time—Dared the colors of our colored skin.

Toi Derricotte

The author of several books of poetry, Toi Derricotte is cofounder of Cave Canem, a national poetry organization committed to cultivating the artistic and professional growth of African American poets. She served as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets from 2012 to 2017.

by this poet

That time my grandmother dragged me
through the perfume aisles at Saks, she held me up
by my arm, hissing, "Stand up,"
through clenched teeth, her eyes
bright as a dog's
cornered in the light.
She said it over and over,
as if she were Jesus,
and I were dead. She had been
solid as a tree,
a fur around her neck,

My mother was not impressed with her beauty;once a year she put it on like a costume,plaited her black hair, slick as cornsilk, down past her hips, in one rope-thick braid, turned it, carefully, hand over hand, and fixed it at the nape of her neck, stiff and elegant as a crown, with